As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Today, networks are typically used to connect personal computers and workstations with file servers, print servers, modems, hubs, and other devices. Examples of such networks include Local Area Networks (LANs), metropolitan area networks (MANs), and wide area networks (WANs). These networks enable the personal computers and workstations to share information and resources. For security and performance reasons, networks may be divided into subnets that are coupled together by multiple switching devices.
Often, these networks may use a network manager to manage operations of the devices on the network, to analyze resource performance, to identify and resolve faults, and to automate management tasks. In a specific example, the network manager may be used to wake up a node that is in a sleep mode. The remote power on may be accomplished by using magic packet technology, which involves the sending of a specially formatted packet of information to a target node. A detecting apparatus of the target node may scan all incoming transmissions from a network device, and wake up the target node upon detection of the magic packet.
One technique for sending the magic packet to the target. node uses a subnet-directed broadcast, which broadcasts a message to all nodes on the identified subnet. The intended target node recognizes the message by identifying the magic packet, reading the hardware address encapsulated in the magic packet and using the magic packet to perform a sequence of instructions to wake the node from a sleep mode if the encapsulated hardware address matches the hardware address for the target node. However, the subnet-directed broadcast feature of all switching devices used to deliver the magic packet must be enabled to provide subnet-directed broadcasts in order for the packet to be properly delivered to the target node.
Today, the subnet-directed broadcast feature in many switching devices is not enabled in order to prevent the broadcast addresses from being used for “smurf” or similar attacks. Therefore, the switching devices have to be manually configured to allow subnet-directed broadcasts. This solution may not be practically feasible because of the risks involved in configuring a large number of switching devices on a network.